


you will never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you

by vasnormandy



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, he/him lesbian allie abbott
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:20:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29483598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vasnormandy/pseuds/vasnormandy
Summary: i love you, he would say, a complementary truth. it is closer to his core than any other fact of his existence, and yet he can only think it immediately preceded or followed by the word "but."    ||     collected short prompt fics from tumblr, on the relationship between jaylen hotdogfingers and allie abbott.
Relationships: Allison Abbott/Jaylen Hotdogfingers
Kudos: 5





	1. blood at the corner of your mouth

she’s been coughing up blood again. third day this week that she’s had these awful coughing fits, dry hacking sounds too harsh and violent for how delicate her body’s been, shaking the whole of her skeletal form like an earthquake pulls at a building’s frame, and it comes up thick and viscous, dark as grave dirt. it’s the third day this week and it’s only thursday, and allison is trying not to worry too much, because logically he cannot believe that the opaque mathematics of their world would send her back only to swiftly sweep her away again. the game is horrible, bloody and unfair, at times random and always uncompromising in its rules and its rulings, in what it gives and what it takes, all subject to the impenetrable whims of its puppeteers - but to his memory, to his memory, it has never lied.

jaylen doubles forward, and allie is trying very fucking hard not to worry, but as he supports her trembling body with his arm hooked under hers, as he feels all her insubstantial weight laid into him, as she leans over the sink - white-knuckled grip on its side with one hand, her other lifted and trembling, holding the bloodied tissue to her lips - as she gasps like what remains of her lungs is trying to crawl up her throat, he is finding it incredibly fucking difficult.

“i got you,” he murmurs, though he knows she’ll likely hate it - the softness of reassurance, the platitudes, the sweet nothings in the face of the abjectly horrific, she always has. he pulls her hair back from her face for her, gently moves the long damp strands over her shoulder. his eyes fix on the chips in his black nail polish instead of her. “i got you,” he says again as another round of coughing grips her, throws her forward, and he catches her before she can slam her forehead into the mirror - “i got you,” and it’s more for him than it is for her, isn’t it.

“i’m okay,” she rasps, eventually, once several minutes have passed in silence, once she’s felt safe enough to lower her tissues and grip the sink with both hands. allie carefully slips a stray bit of her hair behind her ear, and she repeats, “i’m okay,” half irate, or as close as she can muster.

“i know,” he says. “water?” she nods, and he reaches one handed for the cup at the edge of the sink, turns the faucet on with the heel of his hand, fills it only halfway - keeps his hand on the cup even after she lifts hers to take it, just to be safe. she drinks in broken gulps. he watches her throat swell and contract.

she pushes him away, eventually, once she has the strength to grasp again for her distant pride. he lets her go, steps back but stays braced to catch her should her knees give out. there are too many hard porcelain surfaces in this room for her to crack her head on if she fell, too many cold eventualities that would bury her again.

“you’re okay,” he says, and jaylen nods. “you’ve got a -” he reaches out, gestures, and she frowns a little, not understanding. the smudge of blood at the corner of her lips follows the downturn of her mouth. “i’ll get it,” he mumbles. he licks the tip of his thumb and extends his hand to cup her cheek, and carefully wipes it away.

“bit of blood,” he says afterwards.

jaylen wrinkles her nose a little. “just fuckin’ soccer mommed me,” she mutters, “i can’t believe you.”

“shut up,” allie answers, and he’s smiling. there’s a faint laugh pulled up from his chest despite everything, stopped just short of his tongue.

“do i have a bit of shmutz on my nose, too?”

“no.” he’s still smiling. even weakened, even rasped, the wry tone she gets when she’s making fun of him washes over him, settles in his ribcage and blooms there, fills him with an incomparable warmth. he moves his hand back to cradle the curve of her jaw, slips his fingertips into her hair, and kisses the tip of her nose. “you’re good. come on. should get you back to bed.”


	2. things you said when you thought i was asleep

it’s midsummer, and jaylen has kicked the sheets down to the foot of the bed the way she always does - even in sleep struggling for freedom, thrashing against the thin cotton that would stick to her sweat-slick skin. half underneath her, allie is quickly overheating, but he can’t quite muster whatever faculty he would require to push her off of him. the sense memory is much too pleasant, her bare skin hot and pressed flush with his - recalls summer in their first apartment, just out of college, when the air conditioner went out and they’d throw the windows wide at night and put the box fan on and try to sleep in the stifling heat, and wouldn’t sleep, more often than not. recalls her rolling body over his not an hour ago, her dipped head and her hot breath against his ear, the renewed power of her lungs, her vitality, the strength in her curling fingers. 

he wraps an arm around her, finds a space for his hand between the jagged jut of her shoulder blades. even as life returns to her day by day she still seems skin and bones at times. her bony hand is in his hair, though her fingers have long stilled. she heaves a long breath, exhales, and the rush of air tickles his collar, raises goosebumps there.

the sensation is pleasant, and if he keeps his focus there - here, only here, in what he can touch - it is easier not to think about the cause of vigor that today rushed through jaylen’s blood, the color in her cheeks, the reason she is again a step more herself than she has been.

these days - these days, since the initial terror that had gripped him after the slaughter of the tigers faded, since the shock has faded into dull dread, these days he always means to push her further, always only ends up pulling her closer. 

it makes him sick, sometimes, to think of how easily he discards his values, how much effort it takes to muster up revulsion. how simple it is just to allow himself to forget. someone is dead - someone is dead and their loved ones watched as the bright flash turned them to dust - someone is dead and the mark she left drew the umpire’s eyes - someone is dead and it is jaylen’s fault - someone is dead and jaylen does not care. someone is dead and nothing should outweigh that, but after it happened allie found her humming a song they wrote together when they were twenty one years old, that until today she had not remembered, had given him only blank looks when he plucked out the notes on his guitar, when he idly filled her sickly space with their music in the hopes that he might call her back to herself.

it’s only death that’s called her back, and he is sick for feeling grateful.

he shuts his eyes, and squeezes tight, and takes a slow and steadying breath to stave off tears. his hand moves up from her back to drift over her hair - strands shorter than he’s ever known them, impulsively hacked away in some mockery of grief.

“i don’t know what to do with you,” he whispers. his voice is a hoarse and despair-stricken croak, a plea for answers he could never truly ask her for.

i love you, he would say, a complementary truth. it is closer to his core than any other fact of his existence, and yet he can only think it immediately preceded or followed by the word _but._

i love you, he thinks as his arms tighten around her, but if he were to say it, with the ashes not yet cool, it might summon such disgust with himself as he could not live with.


	3. kissed where it doesn't hurt

the television plays reruns of some mindless game show that jaylen seems uncannily engaged in. she has refused to lie back, insists on sitting cross-legged on the couch with the popcorn bowl in her lap, her back straight, her shoulder relaxed as allie gently holds the wrapped ice pack against it.

they picked this couch together, he recalls. the chill is beginning to cut through the kitchen towel, numb his fingers, and he carefully rearranges the towel’s folds to give himself a less frigid grip. jaylen had thrown herself onto the iklea display, declared _this one_ , and he could never say no when she got that grin - patted the soft orange cushions to call him to her, arms outstretched. he’d let her pull him down, kiss him messily on the display sofa in front of half a dozen customers. she’d let him pull her back up to her feet before an employee caught them.

he draped a blanket over it when she broke things off again and moved back in with mike. dark brown and loosely lace-knit from thick, soft yarn, to let just a bit of the color cut through, but not too much. the orange had been grating on him.

his fingers are frozen again.

“cold,” jaylen mumbles. she shifts uncomfortably. she’s stripped down to nothing but her sports bra and tight boxer shorts, said she was overheating an hour ago. “cold. cold. allie -”

“oh, is this cold?” there’s a hint of a grin spreading across his face. he pulls the towel away, presses the bare ice pack to her collar.

“fuck!” she tenses up comically, springs inward, her face scrunched like she’s bit into a lemon, but she’s laughing. “hey!”

“sorry, is that cold?” he moves the ice pack to his other hand and shoves his frozen hand into her face, his fingers pressing divots into her cheek, her nose. she shrieks, and pushes him away as best she can with her good arm.

“fuck you!” she gets out through laughter. he’s chuckling too. he takes the ice pack back, and gently rubs the flushed red skin at her collar with his hand - not the cold one - to bring some warmth back. “you’re the worst,” jaylen tells him. “i’m _injured_.”

“whose fault is that?” he says, because he knows if he told her once he must’ve told her a thousand times not to work herself to hard, not to push herself until she found a limit and then push harder past it - told her a hundred times that a breaking point is a stopping point, and not a fucking challenge.

“fuck off,” she answers. even that line of teasing is a little too close to a lecture for her tastes.

he presses a warm kiss to her collar, an apology, and reaches for the knit blanket - pulls it up from the back of the couch and wraps it around her. “there,” he murmurs, all playful cruelty gone, all tenderness now. “better?”

“little bit.”

“you have to keep the ice on it,” he reminds her. “your doctor said.”

“i know,” she says, and he can tell how badly she wants to complain. he picks the ice pack up from where he’d discarded it on the cushions, goes to work carefully rewrapping it in the kitchen towel.

“you know what it’s called?” she asks.

“labral tear,” he recites without thinking, though as her tone sinks in he can tell she’s setting up a joke.

“a slap tear.”

“‘cause it’ll happen if you slap too many people?” he guesses.

“no, i’m serious.” her grin spreads through her voice. “superior labrum anterior to posterior. that’s actually what it’s called. slap,” she finishes, and pops the p, and punctuates the word by smacking the afflicted shoulder.

she regrets the bit immediately, and groans in pain, and falls backwards into the couch cushions. allie is stunned for a moment, and then bursts out laughing - can’t help himself - shocked sputtering laughter, and he gets out through it, “why the fuck would you do that?”

“i don’t know,” she groans, eyes squeezed shut tight. “oww,” and it’s so pathetic, and so predictable, moronically self inflicted, and even as the obligatory concern for her settles in his chest he can’t help the laughter, the adoration on his face.

he pulls the blanket shut around her, and gently places the bundled ice pack against her injured shoulder again, and with his other hand he cups her cheek, leans over her, kisses her as she lies there. “you are so fucking stupid,” he mumbles, still half laughing, against her lips.


End file.
